The Daily Show has always mined the rich vein of inanity on US cable news for satirical gold, and the latest victim of Jon Stewart and co is financial news network CNBC.

While The Daily Show routinely calls itself the "most trusted name in fake news", Stewart is winning praise for real journalism in challenging the financial news network's hype that fed the credit boom.

"(Santelli) believes in personal responsibility and believes in not rewarding the losers for not seeing the warning signs," Stewart said. He then went on to show CNBC had repeatedly made mistakes in its reporting of the financial crisis, including when CNBC Mad Money host Jim Cramer said that investment bank Bear Stearns was fine only six days before it was saved from total collapse by a fire sale to JP Morgan Chase.

In the annals of business-press criticism, we are humbled to have to admit that there may have never been anything better than the utter beatdown Jon Stewart delivered to Rick Santelli and CNBC last night on The Daily Show.

And Chittum crowned "Stewart (with the help of his writers, of course) ... the most incisive cultural critic in the land. Period".

Years ago, the expression was "Never pick a fight with people who buy ink by the barrel" (meaning newspapers). The modern, updated version is "Never pick a fight with people who have ascerbic, award winning comedy writers, a broad TV reach, and a strong internet presence…"

The American public is mad as hell right now, so why isn't the mainstream media?

And he adds that the First Amendment "doesn't say anything about not being funny, or not being passionate". A satirist and journalist may be two different things as Dan Mitchell of Slate says, but Bunch says that the "passion, humour and facts-over-spin" should be in US newsrooms.

Is the British media doing better? The British media isn't ashamed to have a voice or a point of view. But was the British media cheering the credit boom while ignoring the dangers of a bust? Who is playing the role of Jon Stewart in Britain's credit crisis?